Alan Stewart’s UK and Ireland family history news

Westminster parish registers now online

Over a million Westminster baptism, marriage and burial records dating back to 1538 are now available online.

The family history website Find My Past UK has today published online for the very first time parish records held by the City of Westminster Archives Centre. The Westminster Collection comprises fully searchable transcripts and scanned images of the parish registers.

Today’s launch marks the start of a painstaking project to preserve digitally the City of Westminster Archives Centre’s collection, and sees the first tranche of its baptisms, marriages and burials go online. The remaining records are set to go live over the coming months, along with cemetery registers, wills, rate books, settlement examinations, workhouse admission and discharge books, bastardy, orphan and apprentice records, charity documents, and militia and watch records.

The new Westminster Collection joins a growing resource of official parish records from local archives, including Cheshire Archives & Local Studies, Manchester City Council and Plymouth and West Devon Records Office, with many more in the pipeline and due to go live in the coming months. In addition over 40 million parish records from family history societies can be found at Find My Past UK in partnership with the Federation of Family History Societies.